Folk, Laura Ennor

Efterklang - Piramida

Homespun yet grand release from the Danish alt.folk group

The latest offering from the Danish orchestra-botherers comes wrapped up in a rich mythology: Piramida (also known as Piramiden) is an abandoned Russian mining settlement half way between the northern tip of Norway and the North Pole. The ghost town so…

Meursault, Rob St John and Jill O’Sullivan & Jenny Reeve - Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh, Sat 7 Jul 2012

Triumphant performance more than delivering on high hopes of hometown crowd

Some album launches can be rather flat affairs – people don’t know the songs, the band are nervous, and it can all feel a bit dutiful. But this packed-out show heralding the arrival of album number three for Meursault couldn’t have been further from…

Jeffrey Lewis & The Junkyard - The Third Door, Edinburgh, Wed 26 Oct 2011

Near two-hour set pulls disparate parts into satisfying whole

For this, one of the first gigs at the refreshed and renamed Third Door venue (formerly Medina, and now boasting a beefier new sound system), big personalities and hearts on sleeves are very much the order of the day. Opener Viking Moses is one Brendon…

tUnE-yArDs, Captain’s Rest – Glasgow, Wed 15 Jun 2011

Merrill Garbus is an offbeat, un-obvious, must-see pop act

Three years after she self-released homemade album BiRd-BrAiNs, recognition and even a degree of hype are finally starting to come the way of Merrill Garbus, aka tUnE-yArDs, and so it is that her Wednesday night show at the Captain’s Rest (a venue she…

CocoRosie

Classic Grand, Glasgow, Wed 12 May 2010

The music made by Bianca (Coco) and Sierra (Rosie) Casady pelts the listener with such an array of different styles and influences that the closest order-loving critics have got to describing it is with the catch-all term of ‘freak folk’. Which is odd…

Laura Marling

Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh, Wed 14 Apr 2010

Everyone knows by now that Laura Marling (lest we forget, a 90s baby) is something of a prodigy, but even so, only a doting mother could have thought that the girl wonder had written ‘The Needle and the Damage Done’ (Neil Young’s song about heroin…

Meursault

Album launch, Cabaret Voltaire, Sat 10 Apr

Tonight feels like a showcase of just how versatile Meursault are as a band. That and a big, fuzzy, congratulatory Edinburgh indie scene hug. After the hottest day in Edinburgh for a long time, as many people as the Cabaret Voltaire will hold have…

The 3 Craws

The Caves, Fri 22 Jan 2010

The 3 Craws are what might in certain circles, those more given to overblown rhetoric posturing perhaps, be termed a supergroup: the three lynchpins of the Fife-based Fence Collective – Kenny Anderson, alias King Creosote, Johnny Lynch, otherwise known…

Erland and the Carnival

Erland Cooper and his Carnival are unlikely to be fazed by Glasgow’s notoriously ‘lively’ gig-goers. Although based in London, these are no southern pansies: Cooper was raised on Orkney’s stormswept outcrops, and cut his teeth as a performer in the…

Johnny Flynn

Nice'n'Sleazy, Glasgow, Thu 22 Oct 2009

Supporting London troubadour Johnny Flynn, Anna Calvi is an exciting prospect as she takes the stage - all red lipstick, silk blouse and stiletto heels, picking out an echoing guitar solo that gets faster and more intricate as it goes on. It's an…